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T.G.I.F.F!
in honour of the 3rd harry potter movie being released shortly... check out this woman's harry potter party. i think someone has too much time on their hands. talking of too much time on my hands - big brother 5 starts tonight... i'm stoked.
totally stole this from margi:
First screen name: babyjane - i was 12 and just geekily discovering the world of BBSs
First funeral: my dad's father when i was about 13.
First piercing/tattoo: ears pierced when i was 15.. followed by multiple other piercings in the years to follow.
First Kiss: chris vardeman who lived across the road from us. i will spare you the details but i was floored by the concept of 'tongue'.
First one that mattered: heathrow terminal 3 24th march 200x
First love: brad bowden .. 1st or 2nd grade. i used to write out our wedding invitations. dork!
First enemy: patrice boyd. i said 'your mama' to her and she beat me up. i'm the one who got in trouble. talk about discrimination.
First big trip: i have no idea - i'll say disneyworld, but i'm clueless. maybe my mom will fill us in.
First concert: ZZ Top with cindy engel! i believe it was the afterburner tour.
First musician you remember hearing in your house: the soundtrack from grease? i remember dancing around the living room to greased lightning. i remember finding my mom's old records and thinking she was pretty cool to have the soundtrack to hair (a tradition i carry on) and some beatles and iron butterfly. oh and the mamas and the papas - she had a lot of their stuff. i recall 'stoned soul picnic' in particular.
Last kiss: mary catherine - this morning i was lying next to her and she took her dummy out and planted me one right on the lips. it was soft and sweet and made me tear up a bit. man she's awesome.
Last library book checked out: umm - something that i, no doubt, let go overdue. in the new house we'll be just down the road from a pretty good looking library - so i'm keen to run up some fines there!
Last movie watched: hmm lovefilm sent bruce almighty. not one of jim c's best. b-e-a-utiful. gah.
Last beverage consumed: semi-skimmed milk
Last food consumed: peanut butter toast
Last phone call: a coworker telling me he's going to be late.
Last time showered: about 6:35 this morning.
Last CD played: a collection of great children's songs (including 'oranges and lemons' which i'm trying to memorize since we live near all the places mentioned)
Last annoyance: that my dear friend cathy t is moving away this weekend. i'm bummed.
Last soda drank: diet coke
Last ice cream eaten: white chocolate magnum bar - tasty.
Last time scolded: no clue.. i'm the one who does the scolding around these parts.
Last website visited: margi - which is what started all these questions!
oooh..
guess what starts tomorrow night... (i'm nerdy, i know)
today mary catherine is 18 months old! happy half birthday to the coolest toddler i know! 
ahh - thursday morning. as i sit here with my cranberry juice and peanut butter toast i can report that we are fever-free at our house. after her initial fever came down yesterday morning it never returned. she slept through last night and seems right as rain today.
yesterday andrew went out with sarah and mei and their respective toddlers. i think he enjoyed being a stay at home dad. :) i know i'd love to be a SAHM... oh well. more later.
woke up to the sound of mary catherine crying this morning about 5am.. a went to get her and she was burning up with fever. 39.6 (or 103.3F) she has a bit of a cold, so i can only assume this is part of that. stripped her and gave her some water to drink as well as some ibuprofen. it came right down and has stayed normal. a is at home with her today - hopefully they'll have a calm, fever-free day.
on the house front - things are being held up by our side of the deal. we're still waiting on the mortgage people to talk to the lawyers and waiting for our legal people to wrap it all up. wish they'd hurry up already. buying a house here is much different from buying in the states. frustrating.
uh that's where my parents live..
"The smoke does contain consumed chlorine. So, anyone who is seeing this newscast, please stay out of the smoke. It is very important that you stay out of the smoke. It will irritate you," said Monte Eckles with Bio-Lab, Inc. [Monty sounds brilliant, huh? it will irritate you!.. said with lively southern accent.]
Bio-Lab is home to 250,000 lbs of calcium hypochlorite. The chemical is used to bind chlorine so that it can be sold in a solid form. Officials with the Environmental Protection Agency said it is the solid form that is burning in Rockdale County. It is not poisonous, but it is an irritant. The chemical may cause nasal irritation, sore throat, and coughing."
read more here
mary catherine at kristen & steve's wedding... (look i'm using a new tool called hello to post pictures.. click on the photo to see a larger version)
i finally pulled pictures off the digital camera.. they were from our trip to DC for kristen and steve's wedding.
 
more photos from the depths of my picture collection are here... feel free to have a look! i've told myself that i'm going to get my photo archives back up and running.
and i've decided to do something new with mary catherine's website... you can watch if you want. :)
yesterday was an adventure for the Dunne family... we started out the day looking at a sofa for the new house (the purchase of which should be finished next week!).. we looked at this one. then it was off to the tate modern gallery for a little culture.
i had one of those brilliant parenting moments when i crouched down next to mary catherine and looked at a painting with her. it was a picasso called the three dancers. we looked at the colours in the picture and named them and then counted the number of feet in the painting. how cool did i feel helping my child learn via an original picasso? i felt 100 feet tall.
back at work today... it's always like a puzzle coming back after being gone. random things left on my desk to figure out what happened while i was away. fun. more later.
last night i woke up at midnight and i swear i was a bit doo-lally on those little orange pain killers! i thought i saw a giant frog on the bathroom door... uh, yeah. so today i'm going to try and make it through without them. you'll be happy to know that i am going to venture outside the house today. it's the little things, you know. i'm going to meet my mother in law at the wharf for lunch. this will involve a bus and a bit of walking. should be mellow enough.
monday it's back to work - which should be easy enough as i have a desk job. a little worried about having to sit all day - but i am sure after this weekend's recouping time i'll be good to go. keyhole surgery is a wonder. anyone want to see my gall stones? cos you know, they DID send them home with me. uck.
oh the life of luxury..
i could get used to this... i mean - yeah, it's annoying that i'm in pain and have four slashes in my belly being held together with super glue. but still - it's no secret that i am a daytime telly addict! today i got visibly excited when 'ready steady cook' came on. sad?
i'm feeling pretty okay - i find it a bit difficult to refuse to pick up mary catherine or to be a part of her daily routine. so i am probably doing a bit more than i should. but hey - it doesn't hurt so bad and as long as i'm careful of her kicking/pulling/pushing on my tummy i'm pretty okay. sorry i have nothing newsworthy to report really - umm.. but i've been in the house/hospital for a while now and not had contact with the outside world really. :)
home again from the hospital... operation went as planned and you know - for all my worries and pre-complaining.. the hospital itself wasn't all that bad. the only bed they had for me was in the vascular ward (read amputation ward) and when i checked in the woman told me that i was lucky to get on this ward as it was the nicest one. it was pretty okay. i was in a ward with LOTS of people - but there were only 5 of us in our section and we merry 5 shared a toilet and shower. not too bad considering two of them weren't really using the loo. i'll spare you the details.
my operation was monday morning .. took me down about 830 and i was back up at noon. when i woke up i felt like i'd been punched in the mouth and have a weird numb, swollen place on my lip. and they'd broken my tooth. nice. fortunately, i complained to the anaethestist and he got me an appointment with the dental hospital downstairs and they fixed it. actually - they smoothed over the rough edges on my other front tooth - so my smile is a little better than when i went in. i was pretty mad about the tooth thing. sort like i'd been put to sleep and smacked in the face a few times. weird.
got home yesterday to a mary catherine who'd not been eating or sleeping and doing a lot of crying while i was gone. we were happy to see each other. the rest of this week i'm going to take it easy and heal - i'm still in a pretty decent amount of pain. many many thanks to everyone who came to visit, brought pineapples, sent messages and nice comments. you all make me happy. (don't i sound cheerful? thank you little orange pills!) more later.
so i call the hospital at the time i'm told to.... the woman says, 'well we don't have many beds at the royal london today'... i assure her that i was told i was a priority 'long waiter' and she tells me she'll get back to me.
nice. mother in law in town - will be angry if i get put off again. my gall bladder and i are fine together - but this is getting a bit silly. more later, i suppose. if i don't post you know i've been admitted, i guess.
friday.
well we were on the television last night.. for about 50 seconds. and it was cool. they showed all three of us and mc's bandage and burn. i'll try and post some screengrabs this weekend.
my gall bladder surgery is this coming monday .. i go into the hospital on sunday afternoon. if you ask me - that's a horrible way to end a weekend. but i suppose it could be worse and be saturday, not sunday.
not terribly motivated to write at the moment - so i won't bore. more later. nando's for lunch. yum!
aw man
it just dawned on me that to leave a comment you have to join blogger. uh. no. so i'll be putting the old comment system into place. that really sucks - cos i like the way the blogger comments look. oh well. figures.
EDITED: thank gosh for haloscan, huh? feel free to comment away! as a side note - we're on telly tonight. Trauma on BBC One at 8pm. they've said we're on for about a minute. so make sure not to miss me looking really guilty that i'd allowed my then 10 month old baby to be burned by hot spaghetti. one of my finer parenting moments - and on television, no less!
hurrah
"'When I meet child minders who tell me, ‘I have had to alter my entire daily routine because I am not allowed to take this child off the premises between 9.30am and 10.15am because he has to be in a dark room to be asleep for particular minutes of the day’, then I think, heavens to Betsy, it has all gone a bit far.'"
yay - someone finally speaks out against the advice of gina ford, author of 'the contended little baby book'.... did you know that gina ford has no children of her own? hmm.. yeah. seems like a good person to take advice from. read the article here.
back on da sauce..
oh dear... today - got off the bus. it was colder than i thought it would be (so open toed shoes were a bit of a mistake. memo to self - wearing a parka? might think about warmer shoes. duh.) i'm walking to the office.. taking it easy, looking around. even though i'm sort of jaded about living in london lately, i must admit that every morning i stop and look down oxford street. taking in the old routemasters (double decker buses that adorn so many typical images of london) as they lumber down the famous street. and i do often think - man, this is cool. i can't believe i live here.
okay - tangent, sorry. anyway - was on way to work and passed starbucks and was totally fished in with the idea of a good grande skinny wet xtra hot mocha on such a chilly day. walked through the door, was actually welcomed BACK by the workers there and the smell. oh the smell. so i'm currently -£2.39 down for the day. see - i'd stopped drinking them every day after reading an article about how many calories are in so-called 'designer' coffee. oh well. a splurge.
while we were in DC - we had a chance to invite my good friend whitney and her daughter over to the hotel for a bit of play. i can not tell you how wonderfully bizarre it was to see our daughters playing together. whit was completely by my side for most of the breakup (read midlife crisis) of my 1st marriage and let me just tell you that while she and i had an excellent time - we did a lot of stupid stuff. so the fact that we're now mothers and relatively normal four years later just blows my mind.
her daughter harlow is really adorable and mary catherine even shared some of her toys - man, that was a first!
well i've screwed up my comment system... crap.
i've been playing around with the new features on blogger and somehow have managed to do some damage. you can leave a comment and it'll be emailed to me - but it won't be visible on the site. i'll try and fix it soon. technology = love.
EDITED: by the power of greyskull - it's working. no clue how. anyway - do post a comment to help me test it. give ya a dollar. :)
and the hits just keep on coming..
just got a call from the hospital. apparently my gall bladder and i have now reached the status of 'long waiter' on the NHS and they've had a last minute cancellation. seems charles de gall bladder and i will be parting ways this coming monday. a week from today. so you make me wait over a year, cancel my surgery once on the day of admission and NOW only give me 6 days notice?! yikes. that reduces my time to panic by quite a bit. that's not good!
lactivism alert!
join me in telling fisher price it's not okay to push formula on new mums! click here.
nothing but a downer..
things aren't the best at the moment.. i'm not comfortable writing about it here as i don't know who's reading. but let's just say that things are a bit on the crappy side.
this morning i had an appointment with my beloved gp/doctor. and he was sorta mean to me. i think he's happy that we're moving. i was little taken aback as he's usually really nice to me and we chat freely about all sorts of things. maybe he was just in a bad mood. but it really irked me and has sorta clouded my whole day. phooey on that. more later..
it's been too long since i posted a pic of miss mary catherine.. we had this one taken when we were in atlanta last week. we'd gone to have a formal portrait of her taken in the dress she wore TO kristen's wedding and we had a few snapped in this dress that nanny gave her. it turned out better than her formal picture! enjoy!
i feel physically ill..
unfreakingbelievable. "LONDON - U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday."
I was going to write a rant on this.. but Rob from Darn Tootin' really summed up my feelings and is far more eloquent than i..
'George W. Bush has been not just an bad president, but an exceptionally immoral and inept one. Not only did he take this country to war in the basis of lies and distortions, but he did so without any clear idea of what the hell he was doing or what was going to happen after that war was over. His concern for human rights in his own country has been so questionable that it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that his disregard for the human rights of his Brown Menace, Axis of Evildoer enemies could very well have reached the level of actual policy.
So yes, I would like to see Bush out of office. But not like this. The torture of Iraqis under the auspices of the American flag is not a price I'm willing to embrace just to see Bush go packing back to Texas. It's not the kind of fuckup that stirs any liberal glee. If these stories aren't just regrettable isolated incidents of jacked up morons with too little supervision, but instead are part of policy originating with intelligence officers at the highest levels of the government, then this isn't about a political difference of opinion about how the government should be run. It's not a political discussion anymore.
I've already seen conservative bloggers talking about this, about how you know, sure this might be bad, but compared to what Saddam Hussein did to his people, this is nothing. The Iraqi people should still be grateful that we're there, and if they're not, well, we just need to keep trying to convince them. Nothing to see, move along, and HEY, did you hear how John Kerry used to eat paste in elementary school?
I understand that, too. The political debate in this country has reached such a level of divisiveness and rancor that it's now almost impossible for the more entrenched on either side to admit that they might be wrong without having to eat a lot of crow. But this isn't about left or right. It's about what you as an American would like to see done in YOUR name. If you're a Republican or a Democrat or a Libertarian or a Naderite (God help you) or whatever, you're an American. If it turns out that these things are being done in any sort of official capacity, then THAT'S Un-American, not daring to question the president's judgment or opposing the war.
America, I love you. But please. Don't be stupid. And don't accept the kind of behavior from your government that you'd expect from someone like Pinochet, or Saddam for that matter. The whole world can be as outraged as they want, but only you can do anything about it. '
liz liz bobiz bananfana fofiz fee fie foemiz... liz
okay - this is so funny to me. why? because i am a total nerd who finds the 'hacker language' of l33t really cool .. i mean i'm really into it - i like to IM andrew all the time using it and not just to annoy him! it's a great way to confuse nosy coworkers and the like. anyway - having now revealed my geekiness.. i give you 4PPL3 S4UC3!
|'/\/\ $|_|(|-| 4 /_0$3r!
hey this is cool... bbci's collective.
i'm off to get a veggie burger.
;-D
EDITED: veggie burger was delish.. highly recommend red veg on dean street, soho. have also found cool new news browser for those of us who have design-fond brains. so much news - so much eye candy!
forgot to mention..
this made me laugh. i'm such a nerd.
yesterday on radio 2 - they said was national star wars day.. may the 4th be with you.
hee.
back in the saddle again..
okay - back from atlanta. very good trip. very crappy flight back. there were more than a few times that i thought we were going to plop into the ocean. i was so scared by that and so frustrated by mary catherine (not her fault, it's crappy to be little and an explorer and have to hang out in one spot for so long) that i actually cried. nice. the steward (is that what we're supposed to call them now?) came by and asked me if i was okay i was such a wreck. nice one. three cheers for andrew who made it through the flight with a sleeping princess on him for 4 hours.
speaking of our flight.. got to check in at the airport (for a 18:15 flight - sure thought it was 18:45!) to find out that our reservations were for the day before! yes - mama dunne got it way wrong. thank gosh they were able to shove us on the flight, else we'd still be hanging out in atlanta with no one ever believing that we didn't miss our flight on purpose!
more later... just wanted to check in. i haven't had a chance to watch much of it - but a cool guy called dave sent me a really fun DVD & CD for mary catherine. it's called BZOTS and i have one of their songs stuck in my head called power down (i think it's stuck cos i'm tired and jet lagged) they don't have it online - but an equally cool one is.. working the assembly line. 'hammer nail, you move just like a snail' - see it's written about me! yay free stuff! yay cool mac users making cool stuff for kids!
oh - on a totally different track.. got to work today to find out that my glasses i use when working on the computer are completely scratched! ugh.
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